A report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) this week says human activities have “unequivocally” warmed the atmosphere and warns avoiding the most disastrous impacts of climate change is only possible with rapid emissions reductions.
The report’s findings are broken down by region for the first time. They’re significant for low-lying Delaware, which faces numerous threats from climate change.
Delaware Public Media’s Sophia Schmidt talks with one of the report’s lead authors, Bob Kopp, director of the Institute of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences at Rutgers University.
The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report Monday that says human activities have “unequivocally” warmed the atmosphere.
It’s the first installment of the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report, which will be finished next year.
It concludesthat a certain amount of warming and sea level rise are already locked in. But humans can still take action to avoid some of the most dire impacts.
The report’s findings are broken down by region for the first time. Bob Kopp, a climate scientist at Rutgers University and a co-author of the report, says the findings for the Eastern North America region are not a surprise.
“We are seeing more intense and more frequent heat waves, increases in average precipitation, we are seeing some evidence for more intense hurricanes,” he said. “We’re also of course seeing sea level rise.”
Kopp says although reports like the National Climate Assessment has more detailed regional breakdowns, the IPCC report contains takeaways for local policymakers.
“In order to reach some of the targets that we've talked about—including limiting warming to well below 2 degrees Celcius—we need immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions,” he said. “That’s obviously addressed to the global audience—but in order to get to global net zero, we also need to get to state net zero and national net zero.”
The report is based on tens of thousands of scientific studies and is considered the most comprehensive summary of climate change science yet.
